Eliot Mcgucken

Falstaff is the only comic opera and the last opera in Verdi's production.

Tonight’s performance of Falstaff marked the final performance in the run of this new production by Sven-Eric Bechtolf of Verdi’s swansong at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. For this run, the house engaged a mainly Italian cast, joined by selected Hispanophone and/or US singers, led by John Eliot Gardiner. The result was an effervescent evening, received with audible pleasure by the Maggio audience.

American guitarist Eliot Fisk was mentored by the great Andrés Segovia, who took his last private student under his wing and helped him launch his career. Known for his adventurous repertoire, perfect technique and brilliant sonority, Fisk only recorded a few albums for EMI Germany. His final one is here made available for the first time digitally. It highlights tunes from Latin America, with a focus on Venezuelan works arranged by Fisk’s teacher Alirio Díaz.

Part of our retrospective on the recordings of John Eliot Gardiner this album is dedicated to sacred music. It spans more than fifteen years of glorious recordings, mostly from the Baroque era: classic renditions of Handel oratorios and Dixit Dominus, splendid motets of Bach, pieces by Purcell, Scarlatti, Campra and more – but also includes a few pieces from the Renaissance and French romanticism.

In 2024 and 2025, the Eliot Quartett will perform all 15 quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich, combining them with works by other composers thematically connected to Shostakovich’s music.

Written by an international team of scholars, the Companion offers a wealth of biographical and historical information that illuminates Eliot's work. There are entries on all her novels (including plot synopses), stories, and important essays, plus coverage of poetry and translations, letters and journals, and notebooks and manuscripts. A long entry surveys her life, and shorter entries discuss her family, friends, and acquaintances, the places she lived and the countries she visited, and the writers, thinkers, artists, and composers whose work she knew.